Internet2 and Internet2 members are participating in SC09, the annual Supercomputing Conference, taking place 14-20 November in Portland, Oregon. Visit the Internet2 Booth 1355 on the SC09 exhibit floor. For more information on Internet2-hosted demos, click on one of the bookmarks below.

Internet2 is providing high-speed wide area access links from SCinet to the Internet2 Network and Internet2 ION infrastructure. These graphs show the utilization of the IP link in real time. The utilization data is collected and displayed using the perfSONAR framework. Find out more at psps.internet2.edu.

Internet2 ION enables research—and SC09 demos

The ability to provision high-bandwidth, on-demand circuits is increasingly important to a whole range of disciplines, especially those that depend on high-volume, distributed data shared among global collaborators, such as the Large Hadron Collider experiments and eVLBI research.

Internet2 ION, a revolutionary service that allows researchers to create dedicated point-to-point circuits across network domains, will not only be featured at SC09, but will support extreme network demonstrations from the California Institute of Technology, Internet2, NICT, Northrop Grumman, PIONIER and University of Amsterdam SC09 exhibit booths. At the Internet2 Booth 1355, attendees will be able to try out the simple, wizard-like Web interface for themselves and set up or tear down live circuits right from the exhibition floor. Announced in fall of 2009, Internet2 ION is built on technology developed in collaboration with key partners including GÉANT and ESnet, and leverages both OSCARS and DRAGON technology. For more information on Internet2 ION, visit www.internet2.edu/ion.

pS-Performance Toolkit ensuresoptimum network performance

To ensure networks that support increasingly massive data transfers from leading edge science applications keep performing at optimum levels from end to end, Internet2 together with its partners, ESnet, Fermilab, Indiana University, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of Delaware, have recently released the pS-Performance Toolkit. The toolkit is a suite of services recommended to help engineers monitor performance and solve traditionally hard-to-diagnose network performance problems, even across domains. The pS-Performance Toolkit leverages a perfSONAR infrastructure widely deployed throughout the high-performance networking community that supports science disciplines like the High Energy Physics community.

At Internet2's pS-Performance Toolkit station, the Toolkit's easy installation and "ready-on-boot" functionality will be demonstrated, along with its wizard-like configuration interface, performance measurement visualization screens, and live, bootable CDs of the latest release will be distributed. Also highlighted will be perfSONAR's role in SCinet with a live SCinet network "weathermap" showing a real-time visualizaton of the conference network's traffic.

Live SCinet network traffic visualized using perfSONAR can be viewed online at measurement.sc09.org/public. Real-time utilization of the Internet2 IP link is also being collected and displayed using the perfSONAR framework and can be viewed on this page. For more information on the pS-Performance Toolkit, visit psps.perfsonar.net/toolkit.

OpenFlow addresses unpredictablenetwork traffic patterns

A third Internet2 booth demo station showcases an important network research project called OpenFlow that addresses the growing problem of unpredictability in network traffic patterns due to ever-increasing bandwidth demands, virtualization, remote storage replication, increasing mobile network traffic, and the move from circuit-based SONET access to packet-based Ethernet access.

The OpenFlow demonstration, housed in two exhibit booths, Ciena (Booth 1445) , Internet2 (Booth 1355) is a cooperative effort with Ciena Corporation and Stanford University, and will illustrate how layer 1 and 2 management can be linked to dynamically respond to the inconstant network demands of applications.

Worldview creates a network you can touch

The demo roster will be rounded out by an exciting look into new network visualization capabilities being implemented at the Indiana University Global Research Network Operations Center which provides operations support to the Internet2 Network. Worldview is an interactive, 3D network visualization system designed to show real-time network utilization across multiple networks. Worldview converts Internet2 Network utilization data into a specialized markup language, combines it with other geographic data, then displays it in a stunning, multi-touch-capable display, giving NOC operators a tactile overview of the various layers of the Internet2 Network, and providing an intuitive way for them to interact with abstract, network-related data sets. Though Worldview's usefulness to network operators is obvious, one of the tool's most important uses is as an effective communications tool for conveying a whole range of network characteristics to non-technical network owners, sponsors and stakeholders.

Internet2, University of Delaware and REDDnet partners join forces for the SC09 Bandwidth Challenge

Each year the Supercomputing Conference hosts a Bandwidth Challenge, calling research teams from around the world to battle for the highest throughput to the conference floor. At SC09, Internet2 together with the University of Delaware is participating in the competition with three leading partners of the NSF-funded REDDnet Project: Oak Ridge National Lab, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Vanderbilt University.

The yearly competition is designed to test the limits of network capabilities, and past events have resulted in stunning demonstrations never before thought possible. The competition also provides an important showcase for the technologies and teams who deliver the capabilities crucial to supercomputing and an ever-growing list of applications that require high-performance networking.

Though the event focuses on achieving the highest throughput, this year's Internet2-University of Delaware-REDDnet entry will have special relevance for the hundreds of international research communities that take periodic, large-scale injections of data from remote scientific sources like detectors, telescopes, or massive simulation runs which then need to be distributed as quickly as possible to multiple collaborator sites around the world.

Using an innovative combination of REDDnet's unique distributed storage infrastructure, the Phoebus data movement service developed by researchers at the University of Delaware and the Internet2 IP and ION infrastructure, the team will show how the throughput of data replication and download services can be dramatically improved by simultaneously leveraging multiple data replicas and multiple network paths. The demonstration will use real scientific data sets from the Large Hadron Collider CMS project, transferring them globally to the SC09 conference. The perfSONAR Framework will be leveraged to provide instant monitoring feedback.

Phoebus is also featured in a paper to be presented as part of SC09's renowned Technical Program. "Improving GridFTP Performance Using the Phoebus Session Layer," co-authored and submitted by the University of Delaware and Internet2, will be presented Tuesday, 3:30pm PST, Room PB256, in the Oregon Convention Center.

Each year the SC conference recreates SCinet, "the world's most powerful network," which provides an advanced high-bandwidth network environment capable of supporting the revolutionary High Performance Computing applications and extreme network experiments that have become the trademark of the annual conference.

SC09, held from November 14–20, 2009, showcases the latest advances in high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis. With a massive 400 gigabits per second in capacity, SCinet links the conference center to research and commercial networks around the world like the Department of Energy's ESnet and the Internet2 Network to enable exhibitors to showcase experiments and demonstrations leveraging resources from institutions around the world.

"The high-performance applications and projects showcased at SC09 will likely influence the research and education networking agenda for years to come," said Randy Frank, Internet2 chief technology officer. "This is why participating in SC09 and supporting SCinet is a perfect fit for the Internet2 community, accelerating its strategy to advance research and education networking into the future."

Internet2's community-developed infrastructure services are not only highlighted through demonstrations hosted at Internet2's SC09 Booth 1355, but are part of a robust set of network and monitoring services that have been integrated into SC09's underlying SCinet infrastructure.

Among the services Internet2 provides is a 10Gbps connection to the Internet2 IP Network to deliver enhanced IP services; a 10Gbps connection to the Internet2 ION Infrastructure to enable dynamic circuit network capabilities; Inter-Domain Controller (IDC) software support for controlling dynamic circuits on the conference floor; and a perfSONAR framework deployment for real-time monitoring and visualization of the SCinet network performance. Live SCinet network traffic visualized using perfSONAR can be viewed online at http://measurement.sc09.org/public.

Along with supporting staff, these services deliver the kind of reliable, bandwidth-intensive network resources researchers can rely on to successfully showcase their projects "up close and personal," offering attendees the chance to participate first hand in their experiments.

Internet2 ION and the IDC protocol have been developed through a collaboration of ESnet, GÉANT and Internet2.

The perfSONAR infrastructure has been developed through a global collaboration of ESnet, GÉANT, Internet2 and RNP. In the U.S., development collaborators include: ESnet, Fermilab, Indiana University, Internet2, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of Delaware.